Facilitation Skills

Facilitation is the art of achieving success in groups through engagement and structured processes. It is a process that trainers, team builders, managers and others use to add content, process and structure to meet the needs of individuals and teams and enable them to achieve their objectives effectively. With increasing pressure on organisations to produce results quickly, the role of the facilitator has changed. Part of this change is the ability to motivate a permanent or virtual team of highly qualified people to share their expertise. These groups and individuals need to learn and develop, solve problems, manage conflict, gather information, plan strategies or simply reach consensus. With this in mind, they need the guidance of well trained facilitators who can plan, guide and manage such meetings.

Client Feedback

Target Audience

Facilitation Skills is aimed at managers, trainers, instructors and facilitators and others who deal with groups and teams in order to achieve organisational objectives and goals.

Course Content

Defining what facilitation means

Exploring the difference between facilitation, instruction, management and direction

Identifying the competencies associated with effective facilitation

Learning how to help others to visualise, sort and prioritise complex information

Learning how to manage the environment

Learning how to encourage participation

Learning how to provide positive feedback

Learning how to manage conflict situations

Role play and discussion

Workshop Facilitator

Dr. Paul Donovan is School Director of Teaching and Learning at the School of Business, NUI, Maynooth. He was previously Registrar and Head of Management Development at Irish Management Institute (IMI) specialising in Management Development. Before joining IMI he worked as a general operations manager with the Bord na Mona, the Irish Peat Development Authority. He was also Training and Development Manager of the Bord na Mona group. Paul has delivered executive development programmes in over 15 countries. He has written several peer reviewed articles, over 10 books in training and general management. He has contributed a column to HRD magazine for over 14 years. His research interest is the transfer of training.